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When Jodi Willoughby and her sister Carolyne McIntyre Jackson decided to open their own business eight years ago, they stayed close to home.

Home was just outside Calgary, then a growing city that was on the verge of reaching the one-million mark for its population.

Their bakery, Crave Cupcakes and Cookies has grown, from one location in Calgary to spots in Edmonton and Saskatoon. As cities in the West grow, so too does the sisters' business.

Willoughby said she and her sister looked at opening a store in Toronto, but decided to take the franchise to Saskatoon. They had friends there and felt the specialty bakery shop fit the feel of Saskatchewan's largest city.

"It's not like we were watching any sort of marketing trends," Willoughby said. "Edmonton was a natural trend and Saskatoon presented itself."

As if following the growing cities, the sisters have opened up stores in the three fastest growing cities in the country. According to census data released Wednesday, the Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon metropolitan areas were the fastest growing in Canada between 2006 and 2011.

With Calgary growing by 12.6 per cent between 2006 and 2011, Edmonton by 12.1 per cent, Saskatoon by 11.4 per cent and Kelowna, B.C., by 10.8 per cent, the four fastest growing metropolitan areas are located in the West.

Rounding out the Top 10 are: Moncton, N.B., and St. John's, N.L., Quebec City, Toronto, Oshawa, Ont., and Ottawa-Gatineau.

Census metropolitan areas are defined by Statistics Canada as areas larger than 100,000 people with an urban core of at least 50,000.

Nearly seven out of every 10 Canadians live in one of the country's 33 census metropolitan areas, or more than 23.1 million people, and that number is growing.

As the total rises, cities are trying to cope with all that accompanies population increase, including upgrades to aging water and sewer pipes, as well as providing water and electricity to potential commercial, industrial and residential land.

"It's not necessarily a problem that's unique to the largest cities. The difference is the scale," said Mark Rosenberg, a geography professor from Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. "The old inner-city infrastructure is relatively older and more difficult to replace."

Kent Smith-Windsor knows. The president of the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce said he receives calls daily from neighbouring cities trying to figure out how to manage their growing communities.

The growth in cities has occurred mainly around the edges, suggesting that urban sprawl has become the norm in the growth of Canadian cities. There is finite space in the core to increase population, while there is more space, and usually transit and rail routes, reaching outside the urban core to suburban communities.

"What happens with growing cities is as they grow . . . in essence where the city can produce housing for them. Whether you believe if it's supply driven or demand driven, it doesn't matter," said Rosenberg.

That's not the case in the territories, where growth in regions outside of CMAs and census areas is driven by fertility rates that are higher than anywhere else in Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

But in sheer numbers, it is still the country's most populous city that leads in growth among census metropolitan areas.

The Greater Toronto Area grew by 5.1 per cent between 2006 and 2011, setting its population at almost 5.6 million, according to Statistics Canada figures, an increase of more than 477,000 people. (The total population doesn't include the population of Oshawa.)

The city of Toronto itself — not including its neighbours such as Brampton, which grew by more than 20 per cent, Mississauga, Markham, Oakville, Pickering, and Vaughan — had 2.6 million people in 2011, or more than 500,000 people more than the combined population of Calgary (1,096,833) and Edmonton (812,201), according to census data.

Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — the three largest census metropolitan areas in the country — accounted for 35 per cent of the Canadian population, according to the census.

The number of people living in census metropolitan areas continues to grow at a rate surpassing the national average. Between 2006 and 2011, census metropolitan areas grew at rate of 7.4 per cent, above the national average of 5.9 per cent.

In the West, all but two census metropolitan areas have grown at rates above the national average. In Winnipeg, the growth rate was 5.1 per cent, an increase of about 35,300 residents between 2006 and 2011, while Victoria grew at a rate of 4.4 per cent, adding about 14,500 residents.

And in Ontario, Toronto, Ottawa-Gatineau, Kingston and Brantford bucked the provincial trend that saw growth slow across census metropolitan areas. (Brantford's statistical growth is due to enumeration of a First Nations community that wasn't counted in the last census data, Statistics Canada said.)

After opening up stores in the fastest growing cities in the country, the question for Willoughby and her sister is: where to next?

"That's a good question," Willoughby said. "Last year if you had asked me that question I would have said two shops a year. But for us, growth has to be practical.

"I wouldn't say that expansion in the next couple of years isn't a possibility."

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